UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH AFRICA
College of Education
⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄⋄
INC3701: Inclusive Education
Assignment 5 | Semester 1, 2026
⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄⋄
INC3701
Module Code:
Inclusive Education
Module Name:
Inclusive Pedagogy, School Policy-Practice-
Essay Topic:
Culture, Differentiation, Classroom Inclu-
sion and Assessment for Learning
Assignment 5
Assignment Number:
21 August 2026
Due Date:
100
Total Marks:
Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for Inclusive Education, UNISA 2026
,UNISA | INC3701 Inclusive Pedagogy, Policy and Assessment
Question 1: Inclusive Pedagogy
Inclusive pedagogy sits at the centre of how South African teachers are expected to respond
to the enormous diversity of the post-1994 classroom, and understanding it properly requires
working through what it is, how it departs from earlier teaching traditions, and why it matters
for equity.
1.1 Defining inclusive pedagogy and its purpose
Florian defines inclusive pedagogy as an approach to teaching and learning that supports
teachers to respond to individual differences between learners while avoiding the marginal-
isation that can occur when some students are treated differently from their peers (Florian,
2014:289). The definition is deliberately built around two commitments held together. Teach-
ers must notice and respond to difference, yet the response must not sort learners into sepa-
rate tracks, groups, or lowered expectations that mark some as fundamentally other. Florian
and Black-Hawkins describe this as extending what is ordinarily available to all learners rather
than adding something different for a few (Black-Hawkins and Florian, 2011).
In the South African context, this purpose is codified in Education White Paper 6 on Special
Needs Education, which frames inclusion as building an education and training system that
recognises and respects the fact that all learners differ in some way, and that has the flexibil-
ity to accommodate those differences (Department of Education, 2001). Inclusive pedagogy
is the classroom-level mechanism through which that system-level vision becomes lived prac-
tice. A Grade 4 teacher in a crowded Gauteng township school, for example, does not remove
a learner with a reading difficulty to a corner group doing "easy work"; instead she designs the
whole-class reading task with multiple entry points, so the learner works on the same text as
everyone else at a level of challenge that is accessible to them.
The purpose of inclusive pedagogy, therefore, is twofold: to ensure that learner diversity, en-
compassing disability, language, socio-economic background, and pace of learning, is treated
as an ordinary feature of any classroom rather than a deviation requiring separate provision,
and to protect the dignity and belonging of every learner by keeping them within the main-
stream learning community.
Page 2 of 18
, UNISA | INC3701 Inclusive Pedagogy, Policy and Assessment
1.2 How inclusive pedagogy differs from traditional teaching approaches
Traditional teaching approaches, often described as ability-focused or deficit-based, work
from an assumption that learner ability is fixed and can be reliably measured, sorted, and
taught to in separate streams. Florian’s framework of inclusive pedagogy explicitly rejects
this premise, arguing that there is no such thing as a fixed ceiling on what a learner can
achieve, and that apparent ability differences are frequently the product of the teaching con-
text rather than an inherent property of the learner (Florian, 2015).
This produces several concrete points of departure. First, traditional teaching typically differ-
entiates by removing or diluting content for "weaker" learners, for instance giving a simplified
worksheet to a group judged to be behind, which communicates a lowered expectation and
can entrench the very gap it was meant to close. Inclusive pedagogy instead differentiates
the route to a shared, high standard: every learner works towards the same lesson objective,
but the scaffolding, resources, or means of demonstrating understanding vary. Second, tra-
ditional approaches locate the "problem" in the learner (a medical or deficit model), whereas
inclusive pedagogy locates barriers in the curriculum, teaching method, and environment,
consistent with the social model of disability that underpins South Africa’s Screening, Iden-
tification, Assessment and Support (SIAS) Policy of 2014, which frames barriers to learning
as arising from the interaction between the learner and an unresponsive system rather than
residing solely within the child (Department of Basic Education, 2014).
Third, traditional teaching is often whole-class and uniform, built for an imagined "average"
learner; research on South African foundation-phase classrooms shows that overcrowding
frequently pushes teachers back toward this whole-class transmission mode even where
inclusive intentions exist (Skae, Brown and Wilmot, 2020). Inclusive pedagogy, by contrast,
builds flexibility into the lesson design itself, using cooperative learning, peer support, and
varied representations of content so that the "average learner" assumption is replaced by
planning for a genuinely diverse group from the outset. Fourth, assessment in traditional
teaching tends to be a single, uniform summative test at the end of a unit; inclusive peda-
gogy treats assessment as continuous and formative, feeding directly back into how the next
lesson is taught.
A useful way to see the contrast is side by side:
Both approaches ultimately want learners to succeed, but they diverge sharply on where
responsibility for failure to learn is placed and on whether difference is managed through
Page 3 of 18
College of Education
⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄⋄
INC3701: Inclusive Education
Assignment 5 | Semester 1, 2026
⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄ ⋄⋄
INC3701
Module Code:
Inclusive Education
Module Name:
Inclusive Pedagogy, School Policy-Practice-
Essay Topic:
Culture, Differentiation, Classroom Inclu-
sion and Assessment for Learning
Assignment 5
Assignment Number:
21 August 2026
Due Date:
100
Total Marks:
Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for Inclusive Education, UNISA 2026
,UNISA | INC3701 Inclusive Pedagogy, Policy and Assessment
Question 1: Inclusive Pedagogy
Inclusive pedagogy sits at the centre of how South African teachers are expected to respond
to the enormous diversity of the post-1994 classroom, and understanding it properly requires
working through what it is, how it departs from earlier teaching traditions, and why it matters
for equity.
1.1 Defining inclusive pedagogy and its purpose
Florian defines inclusive pedagogy as an approach to teaching and learning that supports
teachers to respond to individual differences between learners while avoiding the marginal-
isation that can occur when some students are treated differently from their peers (Florian,
2014:289). The definition is deliberately built around two commitments held together. Teach-
ers must notice and respond to difference, yet the response must not sort learners into sepa-
rate tracks, groups, or lowered expectations that mark some as fundamentally other. Florian
and Black-Hawkins describe this as extending what is ordinarily available to all learners rather
than adding something different for a few (Black-Hawkins and Florian, 2011).
In the South African context, this purpose is codified in Education White Paper 6 on Special
Needs Education, which frames inclusion as building an education and training system that
recognises and respects the fact that all learners differ in some way, and that has the flexibil-
ity to accommodate those differences (Department of Education, 2001). Inclusive pedagogy
is the classroom-level mechanism through which that system-level vision becomes lived prac-
tice. A Grade 4 teacher in a crowded Gauteng township school, for example, does not remove
a learner with a reading difficulty to a corner group doing "easy work"; instead she designs the
whole-class reading task with multiple entry points, so the learner works on the same text as
everyone else at a level of challenge that is accessible to them.
The purpose of inclusive pedagogy, therefore, is twofold: to ensure that learner diversity, en-
compassing disability, language, socio-economic background, and pace of learning, is treated
as an ordinary feature of any classroom rather than a deviation requiring separate provision,
and to protect the dignity and belonging of every learner by keeping them within the main-
stream learning community.
Page 2 of 18
, UNISA | INC3701 Inclusive Pedagogy, Policy and Assessment
1.2 How inclusive pedagogy differs from traditional teaching approaches
Traditional teaching approaches, often described as ability-focused or deficit-based, work
from an assumption that learner ability is fixed and can be reliably measured, sorted, and
taught to in separate streams. Florian’s framework of inclusive pedagogy explicitly rejects
this premise, arguing that there is no such thing as a fixed ceiling on what a learner can
achieve, and that apparent ability differences are frequently the product of the teaching con-
text rather than an inherent property of the learner (Florian, 2015).
This produces several concrete points of departure. First, traditional teaching typically differ-
entiates by removing or diluting content for "weaker" learners, for instance giving a simplified
worksheet to a group judged to be behind, which communicates a lowered expectation and
can entrench the very gap it was meant to close. Inclusive pedagogy instead differentiates
the route to a shared, high standard: every learner works towards the same lesson objective,
but the scaffolding, resources, or means of demonstrating understanding vary. Second, tra-
ditional approaches locate the "problem" in the learner (a medical or deficit model), whereas
inclusive pedagogy locates barriers in the curriculum, teaching method, and environment,
consistent with the social model of disability that underpins South Africa’s Screening, Iden-
tification, Assessment and Support (SIAS) Policy of 2014, which frames barriers to learning
as arising from the interaction between the learner and an unresponsive system rather than
residing solely within the child (Department of Basic Education, 2014).
Third, traditional teaching is often whole-class and uniform, built for an imagined "average"
learner; research on South African foundation-phase classrooms shows that overcrowding
frequently pushes teachers back toward this whole-class transmission mode even where
inclusive intentions exist (Skae, Brown and Wilmot, 2020). Inclusive pedagogy, by contrast,
builds flexibility into the lesson design itself, using cooperative learning, peer support, and
varied representations of content so that the "average learner" assumption is replaced by
planning for a genuinely diverse group from the outset. Fourth, assessment in traditional
teaching tends to be a single, uniform summative test at the end of a unit; inclusive peda-
gogy treats assessment as continuous and formative, feeding directly back into how the next
lesson is taught.
A useful way to see the contrast is side by side:
Both approaches ultimately want learners to succeed, but they diverge sharply on where
responsibility for failure to learn is placed and on whether difference is managed through
Page 3 of 18
